1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate holder stocker device for storing a substrate holder in a vacuum processing apparatus which performs predetermined process on a surface of the substrate, a substrate processing apparatus, and a substrate holder moving method using the substrate holder stocker device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system for replacing substrate holders using a substrate holder stocker chamber for coping with the film deposited on the substrate holder in the in-line type substrate processing apparatus has been known (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-120412 and Japanese Patent No. 4377452). The substrate holder stocker chamber disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-120412 includes a plurality of conveying rails provided with radially arranged conveying rollers, and a conveying rail rotating mechanism which is driven to rotate about the radiation center of the conveying rail as an axis so as to allow mounting of the substrate holders on the respective conveying rails. The system is configured such that the conveying rail is rotationally moved and connected to a carry-in/carry-out port (single location) formed in the stocker chamber, and thereby the substrate holder in the stocker chamber is loaded and collected into the in-line type substrate processing apparatus.
The substrate holder stocker chamber disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-120412 which employs the rotating system for storing the substrate holders requires the conveying rails to be radially arranged. The radius of the radially arranged conveying rails is determined by the number of built-in rails and the rail interval. If the number of the built-in conveying rails is increased, the substrate holder has to be arranged apart from the radiation center, thus increasing the radius of the radial arrangement. The conveying rail interval around the center is increased as it is closer to the outer circumference in accordance with the radiation angle owing to the feature of the radial arrangement, thus generating useless space (dead space) in the outer circumference. The above-described disadvantage interferes with further reduction of the size of the substrate holder stocker chamber.
The substrate holder stocker chamber disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-120412 has the storage substrate holders radially arranged. It is thus difficult to place the heater for heating all the substrate holders because of wide range of arranging the substrate holders. The heaters are then fixed to two positions on the ceiling, and substrate holders have to be rotated by the rotating mechanism for the purpose of ensuring temperature distribution upon heating. In the generally employed system, heat input level for each substrate holder is low, thus requiring long time and much power for degasifying heating including temperature rising.
The substrate holder stocker chamber disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4377452 has the substrate holders arranged in parallel so that the dead space is reduced compared to the rotation type structure for storing the substrate holders, and furthermore, the device has simplified structure and reduced space. The substrate holders may be efficiently heated because of reduced size of the chamber.
However, the substrate holder stocker chamber disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4377452 is configured to convey the stored substrate holders using the vertical moving mechanism. Therefore, upon movement of the substrate holder up and down, contact between metals or between metal and resin repeatedly occurs, which may generate dust accompanied with vertical movement of the substrate holder. Suppression of such dust generation has been demanded.